Page 29 of Angel's Smoke

Iron exhaled slowly and adjusted his flannel sleeves lower over his wrists. “For now, we wait.”

Chapter14

“Remind me who the celestial mages are again?” Anna took a sip of her drink, a hot water, lemon, and ginger concoction that had seen her through many a rough gastrointestinal spell, and studied the man across from her as he scrutinized the game board and tiles on the coffee table between them.

“They’re what you would call the Empyrean’s governing bodies and spiritual guides.”

“Ah. The top brass,” Anna mused.

“Essentially.”

“They always doled out your marching orders, I take it?”

Iron grunted, adjusted his position on the floor, and dropped two tiles onto the Scrabble board. “We serve at the pleasure of the mages.”

Not knowing what to make of that statement, Anna let the subject drop and leaned over the coffee table. Her brows dipped low. “A double word score withwyvern? How long were you hanging onto thatwandyfor?”

“Since you played the worduvulaseveral turns back.” Iron took a swig of a beer he’d also brought with him.

“Bastard. I thought I was being so clever.”

“You were. Just not clever enough.”

A swath of rich brown leather peeked through the cuff of his flannel as he brought the bottle to his lips again, but Anna just chewed the inside of her cheek and went back to staring at her tiles. It was one of the few curiosities she had about him that he would always blatantly skirt around, and that was saying something given the Dateline-worthy interrogation she’d put him through all day.

Since the pyrotechnic display that morning and still with little in the way of proper power or provisions, she and Iron spent the entire afternoon unwrapping all things supernatural. She’d asked him questions about his brothers, the demon ruler Cyro, the war, how mortals played a part in it all, and then, to her ever-loving glee, they got to the demonstration portion of the lecture.

Wings. Metallic wings. Never in a million years would she have imagined the stunning beauty of Iron’s wings or how they functioned. When he first showed her, she’d had to change into hergoodglasses, the ones with the most up-to-date prescription that she usually kept on her desk for work. She was convinced the grungy frames and lower-power lenses she usually wore when putzing around the house weren’t doing justice to the single most breathtaking bit of actual magical realism—unrealism?—she’d ever seen.

When Iron had placed his hands on her shoulders and positioned her into the corner of her living room, she hadn’t known what to make of it, until he backed up as far as he could and translucent skeins of energy rippled from behind his back. Once they consumed the room, they’d solidified into enormous sheets of charcoal-gray feathers.

Anna hugged her mug closer to her body, recalling how her eyes prickled at the sheer awesomeness of it all. Iron’s presence, strength, power, they radiated off him in magnanimous currents that made sense of every action he’d ever bestowed on her, twisting the meanings of their interactions into something she wasn’t entirely certain how to interpret.

So she leaned into the tactics that had always served her well: escape and evade.

It was her idea to bring out the board games. And as the afternoon light faded into the chill shade of night, with the storm showing no signs of slowing down despite what the meteorologists claimed was an earlier squall, they pulled out a few lanterns, threw a bunch of drop pillows on the carpet around the coffee table, and fell into a happy little rhythm of good, clean, and entirely unassuming fun.

Anna shifted the tiles around in her holder, trying to come up with a word that would play well with what Iron had left her to work with. The move wasn’t strategic so much as distracting. Despite all the questions he’d graciously answered, there were a few she hadn’t quite been able to bring herself to say out loud.

She picked up a tile and went for the only easy points available, in the game or otherwise.

Iron arched a brow. “Wyverns? Really? There are, like, four S tiles in the entire game and you blow one on pluralization? I’m going to need you to show your work on that one.”

Anna shrugged. “Points are points, and my strategy is my own.”

“Silly me. I thought you wanted to win.”

“Who says I don’t? It would be unwise to assume I don’t have a plan just because you can’t see the complexity of my moves just yet.”

“Hmm.” Iron tracked her fingers as she plucked out her replacement tile. “Didn’t figure you for the ruthless type.”

“You, my friend, have alotto learn.”

Iron took another pull on his beer. “Can’t wait.”

The tone of his declaration sent an unsettling chill coursing down Anna’s spine. For anyone else, those two words, spoken in a lighthearted and casual manner, would have been dismissed as quickly as they’d been said. But for her, they dredged up memories of another man who, just a few short months ago, in this very living room, had echoed sentiments that had plunged her life into one of sorrow and solitude.

“Can’t it wait, Anna? I’ve got a call in ten minutes.”

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